Laurel was glad to know Charity was among the living. That she was happily running her own candy store and not the hotel she had loathed. Laurel wished they had found Charity’s brother alive. But she still hoped her aunt might be.

“I’d forgotten all about your grandfather’s chest.” Laurel hoped they wouldn’t find anything to confirm that Sheridan had something to do with her aunt’s disappearance.

Chapter 21

On the way home, CJ called Darien. “We didn’t learn much new, but here’s what we have.” He explained everything and then added, “Can you have Peter arrest the Wernicke brothers on some charge? Have them locked up and watched to see if they shift during the full moon tonight? We just need one in jail to prove whether they’re royals or not.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Another thing, we don’t want the word to get out about Charity running the candy store in case someone killed her brother and wants to get rid of her too. She’s going by Pamela Houser, and I figure we’ll keep her real name under wraps.”

“Understand.”

“Okay, well, we’re looking into another matter and then taking off the rest of the night.”

“Sounds good, CJ. I’ll let you know about the Wernicke brothers later. We’ll be questioning them about what Charity said. We’ll just say we have a source of information that proves it, without identifying her. We’re having the meeting with the elders tomorrow night in the conference room.”

“All right. Let me know how it goes with the brothers.” They ended the call, and when they reached CJ’s home—and now Laurel’s, CJ thought with a thrill—he asked her, “How are you feeling?”

“Exhausted.”

“I’ll fix us some hot cocoa if you’d like, and then we’ll see if we can find anything in my grandfather’s chest.” He motioned to an old oak chest, tall with thirty drawers.

“CJ, I hate to bring this up, but why would your father have a locket with a picture of both my mom and my aunt in it? He told my mother when she came looking for her sister that Clarinda had never worked at the hotel. So that proves he lied about it.”

“Maybe.”

She frowned at him, and he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. “We can’t know for sure. We have to consider every possibility. What if he found it and kept it, hoping to find the owner? She could have shifted, left, and then was never seen again. Anything could have happened. We just don’t know.”

Laurel let out her breath in exasperation, hating to admit CJ was right.

“You’ve never talked about your mother.” Not that she’d mentioned her own either. But maybe Sheridan’s relationship with his wife would give Laurel a clue.

“She died when we were six. A hunter killed her when she was taking us out to the woods to run as wolves.”

CJ had to have been traumatized to see his own mother shot and killed like that, and Laurel felt terrible about it. “As wolves?”

“No. None of us had shifted yet. He said he thought she was a deer.”

“God, I’m so sorry, CJ. Was he human?”

“Yeah. Darien’s dad was the leader at the time. Dad wanted the man dead for killing his mate. But Darien’s dad had to find the man not guilty of murder. It wasn’t a case of premeditated murder. Just an accident.”

She stirred the chocolate around in the milk in the saucepan. “Was your dad angry about it?”

“Yeah. Not only did he love our mom, but he had four six-year-old boys to raise on his own. Though everyone in the pack helped to raise us, including Darien’s mom.”

“Did Sheridan ever take another mate?”

“No. He didn’t let that stop him from having affairs, but he never took a mate again.”

“I hate to ask this…” Laurel hesitated.

“Ask. Any question that can lead us to solving this case is worth asking.”

“Did your father take a token after he committed the murder?”

“No.”

Laurel sighed with relief. “Then why would he have my aunt’s locket?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, I’m afraid.”

“What if—and I know this is really far-out—but what if your father was romantically involved with my aunt? What if she was referring to your father in the postcard?”

“Why would he have her locket? And deny she had been here?”

“I don’t know. What if she went for a run in the woods and vanished? And Sheridan discovered her clothes and necklace?”

“But he would have reported it. He wouldn’t have ignored it. Not if he felt something for her.”

“And if he didn’t?”

“Then you’re back to the notion that my father had something to do with her disappearance.”

She hated to admit he was right. She poured the heated cocoa into mugs.

He added marshmallows, then took her in his arms and hugged her tight. “No matter what we find—”

“It doesn’t reflect on you or your brothers, CJ. I just want to know the truth.”

He kissed her mouth. “I know. I do too.”

She loved him and was grateful he was taking all of this in stride.

They each grabbed a mug of cocoa and walked into the living room to start searching the old chest.

“I guess we’ll just begin pulling out drawers and see what we can find,” he said.

They drank their mugs of cocoa, then set them on the coffee table and began to pull one drawer out at a time to examine.

“Wait,” she said, feeling something move as she slid her fingers over the bottom of the drawer. “Maybe the joints are no longer as secure, but…if it has a secret bottom, wouldn’t there be a trigger to release the cover?”

“Can you use one of your fingernails to lift the panel, if that’s what it is?” CJ asked, drawing closer, his breath warm against her hair as he peered down at the drawer.

“No. Do you have a fingernail file?”

“Turn it upside down.”

She did and it rattled a bit, which she figured was the loose panel or the bottom of the drawer no longer fitting snuggly against the sides.

“Okay, let me see what I can find.”

She kept trying to slip her fingernail between the panel and the front of the drawer without success.

“This is a long shot,” CJ said, returning with a thin screwdriver and a magnet.

He used the magnet first and it immediately grabbed hold of the panel and lifted it. “Well, I’ll be damned.” A piece of metal glued to the underside of the panel had attracted the magnet.

But they didn’t find any secret items or documents. Just lots of big, green bills—ten-thousand-dollar bills. Ten of them.

“Ohmigod, CJ.” She turned to pull another drawer out. “Why would he have all this money hidden in here? And such big bills?”

“Grandfather Silver didn’t trust the banks. We found around five hundred thousand stuffed in his mattress. I’m surprised Dad didn’t come across the false drawers. Then again, each of the drawers was stuffed with stationary supplies—pens, ink, envelopes, notepads, paper clips, scissors, and the like. Dad never emptied them.

“Before I brought it home, I dumped all the stuff in the drawers into one of the boxes we searched through. And everything was rattling around so much in the drawers, I never considered they might have false bottoms.” He smiled again. “Man, are my brothers going to be surprised. None of them wanted this old chest. But I’d always loved it. Grandfather built it himself. Now I know why.”

“Where did he get the money?”

“He worked hard all his very long life. Made some wise investments in land and ended up having property with a gravel pit. Gravel made a mint for him.”

“Wow. Are you going to share? Or turn the bills over to a museum?”

“I’ll ask my brothers what they want to do with the money, though since you’re my mate…”

“It’s your family’s. You and your brothers need to decide.”

She rattled the second drawer. “He can’t have had false drawers in all of these.”

CJ was grinning his head off as he watched her use the magnet on the second drawer. Up came the panel. And more greenbacks. Ten more.